Page 64 of 67
Regardless of this pistol held to her head, she told him that he had disappointed her. She had always looked on him as a true friend.
He hurried away at the entrance of Mr. Willie Bateman, and before Mr. Bateman had eaten his second hot cake, he had assured her that if she were good enough to marry him she might depend upon his making her the most celebrated woman in England. He had a plan, he said—an advertising system that could not possibly fail, and if she rejected him he would communicate it to the Duchess of Manxland who was at her wit’s end to find some new scheme of advertising herself—she had exhausted all the old ones.
But even the force of this threat did not prevent Amber from telling him that he had disappointed her. She had always looked on him as a true friend.
When he had gone away in a huff, she ate the remainder of the hot cakes and reflected that she had received four proposals of marriage within the week.
This was excessively flattering and annoying, and the truth began to be impressed upon her that Platonic Friendship was all that Josephine had said it was and that it was in addition a perpetual encouragement to a timorous lover.
A letter received from Pierce Winwood two days later made her inclined to ask, as he did several times, in the course of three hurricane pages, if inaction as a policy might not be pursued too long? Her father had responded enigmatically to her hints that she thought if a Cabinet Minister could not settle down in his seat in the course of two days he must be singularly ill-adapted for a career of repose.
He had laughed heartily when she asked him again if Mr. West was not ready for the time-fuse? or was it the time-fuse that was not ready for Mr. West, but the questions were not further responded to; and now here was Mr. Winwood saying that he would call this very day.
His announcement sounded like the tradesman’s threat which she had once seen at the foot of a college bill of her brother’s to the effect that the writer would call on such a day at such an hour and hoped that Mr. Severn would find it convenient to have his money ready for him.
She found, on counting her loose change—all that she had got from her father in response to her hints—that she had not enough to pay Pierce Winwood—she would not even be able to give him something on account. She had neither seen Josephine nor heard anything about her; and she knew better than to fancy that the ardent lover would go away satisfied with the parable of the time-fuse.
She had all the courage of her sex; but she could not face him. She actually felt herself becoming nervous at the thought of his entering the room and repeating in her ears the words which he had shouted into his letter. His noisy letter had greatly disturbed her; so after an interval—an uneasy interval, she rushed at paper and pens and scrawled off a page in precisely the same style as that which he had made his own, begging him for heaven’s sake to be patient, if it was possible, for a few days still, and entreating him to be a man. (She knew that this was nonsense: to be a man was to be wildly unreasonable and absurdly impatient in simple matters such as waiting until a young woman came to know her own mind.)
She was in the act of putting her avalanche letter in reply to his hurricane pages, into its envelope when the door of the small drawing-room where she was sitting at a writing-table was flung open and Josephine swooped down on her, kissing her noisily and crying in her ear the one word “saved—saved—saved!” after the style of the young woman in the last popular melodrama—only much less graceful in pose.
“What—what—what?” cried Amber spasmodically within the encircling arms of her friend.
Then they both rose, as it might be said, to the surface of their overwhelming emotions, and stood facing each other breathless and disordered.
Josephine went off in a peal of laughter, Amber, ever sympathetic though burning with curiosity, followed her, and then they flung themselves on the sofa—one at each end, and laughed again.
“I am saved—saved—and I come to you to tell you so,” cried Josephine, catching one of Amber’s hands and swinging her arm over the cushions that billowed between them.
“Saved—saved—is he dead—or—or—has he been found out?” whispered Amber. “Clever men invaribly are found out.”
“Found out?—oh, I found him out long ago—the day he tricked me into believing that I was still bound to him, though he had just pretended to set me free. But to-day—before lunch time—by the way, I have had no lunch yet!”
Both girls laughed as aimlessly as negresses at this point, it seemed so ridiculous not to have had lunch.
“Before lunch—he came to you?” suggested Amber.
“Not he—not Launcelot but another—the other was a young woman—oh, quite good-looking, and wearing a very pretty Parma-violet velvet hat with ospreys, and a cashmere dress, with an Eton jacket trimmed with diagonal stripes of velvet to match the hat—oh, quite a nice girl. I had never seen her before—she had sent in her name—Miss Barbara Burden—such a sweet name, isn’t it?”
“Quite charming! Who was she? I never heard the name.”
“I had never heard the name. I fancied that she had come about a bazaar for the widows and orphans, so many strangers come about that, you know—but she hadn’t. I saw her. It was most amusing; but she was quite nice. She had the newspaper in her hand with that announcement—that horrid announcement——-”
“I know—I know.”
“‘Do you love that man, Miss West?’ she began, pointing to the paragraph.”
“Good gracious! That was a beginning—and a total stranger!”
“So I thought. Of course I became cold and dignified. ‘Have you not seen that I am going to marry Mr. Clifton?’ I asked in as chilling a voice as I could put on at a moment’s notice. ‘What I mean is this,’ said the young woman; ‘if you tell me that you are about to marry him because you love him, I will go away now and you will never hear anything of me again. But if you cannot say truly that you do love him I will tell you that the day you marry him I shall bring an action against him that will go far to ruin his career and to make you unhappy for the rest of your life unless you are very different from what I have heard you are, Miss West.’”
